From December 16th to 18th, under the strategic guidance of the Shenzhen Municipal Financial Regulatory Bureau, the Futian District People’s Government of Shenzhen Municipality, and the Nanshan District People’s Government of Shenzhen Municipality, the “2023 Shenzhen International FinTech Competition (FinTechathon) - Xilihu FinTech College Students Challenge” (hereinafter referred to as the “Competition”) jointly organized by Shenzhen University, WeBank and Shenzhen Xiangmihu International FinTech Research Institute and other parties has successfully concluded at Shenzhen University, and an award ceremony for the competition has been held. Wang Xindong, member of the Party Group and Deputy Director of the Shenzhen Municipal Financial Regulatory Bureau, Ma Zhitao, Vice President and Chief Information Officer of WeBank, and Liu Haishan, Secretary of the Party Committee of the Shenzhen University WeBank Institute of FinTech (SWIFT), attended the award ceremony.

As a part of the Shenzhen FinTech Festival, this competition has been successfully held for five sessions. By leveraging its advantages in resources, talent, technology, and collaborative innovation, it has facilitated the deepening of industry-university-research cooperation and won widespread attention and recognition. This competition lasted for three months and received over 300 teams from over 1500 students. Among them, the number of applicants from China’s Double First Class Universities exceeded 670, and more than 30 foreign universities signed up to participate. After intense competition, the winning teams in the three tracks of blockchain, artificial intelligence, and product management were awarded a total of 690,000 yuan in prize money and blockchain digital certificates in this competition.

It was worth mentioning that the digital certificate was based on WeBank blockchain technology, using the domestic secure and controllable open source platform FISCO BCOS as the underlying chain. The winning information on the chain was tamper proof, traceable, and the data source was trustworthy. Winners could view and download digital certificates at any time, and the colleges, recruitment companies, and others could also scan codes to quickly verify the authenticity of certificates, achieving trustworthy verification and efficient communication.

   

At the award ceremony, Wang Xindong, a member of the Party Group and Deputy Director of the Shenzhen Municipal Financial Regulatory Bureau, said, “This competition adheres to the concept of applying what is learned, which is of great significance for exploring the development prospects of FinTech, strengthening the cultivation of emerging FinTech talents, and creating a new pattern of deep integration of industry-university-research.”

Image: Speech by Wang Xindong, member of the Party Group and Deputy Director of the Shenzhen Municipal Financial Regulatory Bureau

Liu Haishan, Secretary of the Party Committee of the Shenzhen University WeBank Institute of FinTech (SWIFT), said, “With competition leading learning, we are jointly organizing a FinTech competition with WeBank to attract talents from both domestic and foreign countries to actively explore technological application innovation in the field of FinTech, and have the opportunity to provide more valuable technological solutions for the industry.”

Image: Speech by Liu Haishan, Secretary of the Party Committee of the Shenzhen University WeBank Institute of FinTech (SWIFT)

Ma Zhitao, Vice President and Chief Information Officer of WeBank, said, “This competition is conducive to exploring and cultivating FinTech talents, providing talent reserves for Shenzhen to build a highland for FinTech development. In addition, as a digital bank with technology as its core development engine, WeBank will continue to adopt an open attitude and take multiple measures to promote the development and application of FinTech.”

Image: Speech by Ma Zhitao, Vice President and Chief Information Officer of WeBank

As co initiators and organizers of the competition, Shenzhen University and WeBank have established years of deep cooperation in innovative talent cultivation and promoting the development of FinTech.

It was understood that WeBank was the first digital bank in China, continuously cultivating FinTech and conducting industry-university-research-application brainstorm in key technology fields such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and big data. It has also built the world’s first fully autonomous and controllable distributed core system that supported billions of users and high concurrency transactions, becoming the first commercial bank in China to obtain national high-tech enterprise certification. In addition, WeBank has always focused on the introduction and cultivation of FinTech talents. Since its establishment, the proportion of technology personnel has remained above 50%, and the proportion of technology research and development expenses in operating income has reached about 10% over the years, laying a solid foundation for its practice of inclusive finance and service to the development of the real economy.

In 2019, Shenzhen University collaborated with WeBank to establish the first FinTech institute in China - Shenzhen University WeBank Institute of FinTech (SWIFT). This institute was an international, high-level, and research-oriented FinTech institute, committed to cultivating academic, practical, and innovative FinTech talents for the construction of the “dual zone”. Based on the field of FinTech, it offered full-time undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral courses, and planned to lay out different FinTech professional directions, such as financial big data technology application, blockchain finance, insurance technology, regulatory technology, etc., meeting the training needs of professional and technical talents in various sub sectors of the FinTech industry.